Autism gains voice in China

• Source: The Global Times
• [21:57 May 19 2009]
• Comments

My World, by Huo Yanming, 17, of Jiangsu Province

Is It Me? by Bi Changyu of Zhejiang Province
Illustrations: Beijing Association for Rehabilitation of Autistic Children

By Peng Yining

Yang Tao couldn’t speak a word at age 4. His mother at first denied there was anything wrong.

“There is an old Chinese saying,” said Tian Huiping. “Gui ren yu chi (great wits rarely speak). I always used that to comfort myself.

“I was really worried about him, but I loved my son so much that I lied to myself that he was perfectly healthy.”

Tian finally took Yang Tao to hospital, where in 1989 he was diagnosed autistic.

“It’s like hell when you realize your child is suffering a lifetime illness,” she said, “and will never lead a normal life.”

Tian quit her job as a college teacher in Chongqing and came to Beijing to found China’s first non-governmental educational organization serving children with autism on March 11, 1993. Today there are more than 500 non-governmental health facilities for autism in China, many of them founded by parents of autistic children.

When she decided to found an autistic school, Tian chose Beijing without hesitation. “As the capital of China, Beijing is the center of culture and commerce,” Tian said. “I thought I could get help from the government.”

Instead she weathered a fusillade of refusals. She also didn’t know where she could apply for grants: no government department regarded autistic people as its responsibility.

China already has millions of blind and deaf-mute people to take care of, Tian remembers an official told her, but autism was “just a mental illness”. She would just have to wait, he told her.

She said she realized at that stage that until China’s social welfare system was completely overhauled for autistic people, “We’re on our own.”